Wednesday, 13 September 2017

Ramblings of a mad man.

My last post mentioned me selling out of Woodford Income fund and going it alone in an attempt to lose money in a more amusing manner than Woodford had. Which primarily involved shorting EURGBP and owning a small Tungsten mining stock called Wolf Minerals. The bad news is that Woodford outperformed me on the losing money stakes, whilst the good news is I can now afford a craft ale and I had some fun.

I can’t string thoughts together tonight so here are the bullet points.

The path of pain is for equities to skyrocket again. Purely for the reason that we have had so much bad news recently and we haven't been able to go down.

I note USDMXN and USDRUB are moving higher. Why these two over other EM? Trump unwind and USDRUB is a refection of many global things.

This could be a precursor to an EM unwind, which doesn’t sit well with my general 'risk motoring' view. Better watch this.

Copper bounced but is down again. Looks like a rollover sign. Add this to EM concern though both could be USD rally backlash.

USD rally? Look at cable, are you sure?

GBP rally, FTSE underperforms, naturally. But some idiots are going to use either to support their narratives on Brexit, so as a prophylactic…..

Mifid2 - I am setting up an "artisan organic blockchain research" platform as it will be able to charge 16 times as much for the same product as a basic research platform. Maybe more if I get a graphic designer to put swirly floral patterns on the home page.

Iphone8 - if you want to understand why it will sell more than the Samsung S8 then read this. Basically, we are hardwired to be predisposed to believe that something more expensive is better. It’s how face creams work, or don't but get bought. And the corollary is this blog.

iPhone8 everything else- you can talk using a turd emoji. It does a lot of things the Samsung S8 does but in a cooler way. And it's got no home button. So that’s you stuffed coming out of the club at 4am. But it does want to have 30,000 points of familiarity with my face. That might work as a chat up line for some but not with me and certainly not from a phone. There has to be some acne cream manufacturer banging on Apple’s door with that feature, surely.

The levels of bad debt at Italian banks is collapsing, not as much because bad debt is getting good as people are buying bad debt from the banks in the hope it will become good debt. Pass the ticking parcel, so to speak.

It may be being used for other purposes though. Crypto currencies Initial Coin Offerings have broken the records set in CDOsquared property heaven of 2006/7 by amortising the future value of fresh air - this example of a guaranteed honestly useless coin is Useless Etherium, which would be priceless if it didn’t have a price, but it raised $90,000. So if you can now issue crypto currency backed by nothing and folks will buy it, just imagine how much you could get by backing it with something, anything .. even Italian bad debt - Standby for the ItalianBadDebtCoin. #IBDC

It maybe too late as FCA goes Loco on ICO - not really but it rhymes. They have announced that ICOs are very risky but aren’t always sure if they are covered by FCA regs but watch out if they are. And just don’t put your hand too far into the meat grinder if they are not. That's helpful, isn't it?

The same amount as the country of Jordan just to process existing transactions. 175kWh for each transaction apparently. This is the equivalent to an inverse perpetual motion machine - you pour in limitless energy and get nothing out. Some rule of the conservation of something is being broken here and if it isn’t then the planet is. Bitcoin is not green.

And we have to add Etherum and the rest to that too.

Jamie Dimon says Bitcoin is a scam - a very bright man is that Mr Dimon. OK, he may have been wrong about some things in the past but if we refuse to listen to anyone who once got something wrong we’d only be listening to 1yr olds.

To try to immerse myself in bitcoin I tried to follow some bitcoin twitter. Imagine a primary school playground at break where the kids have found a copy of "Janet and John go charting”, some spacesuits, cardboard and crayons.

Yeah, I know - here comes the abuse. But I've openly come out as a Bitcoinophobe so you can’t oppress me because if you think that I am wrong then it means you think you are superior to me and so anything you say would be bullying. Or some such PC force field barrier.

I’ve spent too much energy on Bitcoin too. It just sucks it out of you.

Other stuff -

They are going ahead with the Stonehenge A303 tunnel. Yeehaaa!! It's avoiding the monument and though some are saying its disturbing ancient land, nearly all land is ancient. As for desecrating it, I’m sure those trees and that grass aren't 5000yrs old. Anyway, did you know that Stonehenge was moved from near Milton Keynes by the Romans to make way for Watling Street but they kept it quiet? Strange but untrue.

The protests at disturbing this monument seemed at odds with other recent calls to pull monuments down. When does a statue which is subject to being pulled down in protest against the erectors morals, transcend into an ancient monument where age makes it immune to threat. Just saying that, say, say, like, I could prove that Stonehenge was built by child murdering proto-nazis would there be a call to pull it down? No? So how is the time/moral boundary determined?

bitcoin - where do you start? I honestly have no idea why the whole thing has not been made illegal yet given its sole purpose in life seems to be to enable organized crime, money laundering, sanctions breaking, dark web transactions, you name it. the uk gov seems to love making almost anything illegal at the drop of a hat, but not this. weird.

@Anon14:10The primary use case is not illegal at all. Cheaper value transfers and avoiding monetary inflation. If there are illegal activities facilitated by a technology, you don't ban the technology, you regulate it and punish the actual crimes instead. Unless you suggest to declare knives illegal as well.

My theory on bitcoin is the Governments & Central Banker's are happy to see this play out for a while. They don't mind the slippage of several billion etc. They ultimately want a cashless society and this provides the opportunity to move there. Once they have gathered as much intel as required, it will be regulates or banned. We will only be allowed use approved crypto's like the USDcoin. ISV's will be forced to stonewall it, companies will not be able to transact in illegal crypto'a etc. And that's how the big guys move from a dollar backed hedgemoney to a cashless society. /Rogoff

Hugely good idea for state to launch their own. benefits of blockchain, pegged to local curr so no FX vol, issuance counted in money supply data. And state can see who is doing what - losses anonymity which is exactly what governments are anti - re crie and money laundering

US should get on and issue theirs first because first major curr to do so will have a reserve currency advantage.